Prayer Just Beginning to Form
BY ASHLEY GONG
Newtown High School, ’16
2016 Adroit Prize for Poetry: Editors’ List
This river floods, spews upturned fish
gasping for breath. We fly them
like stillborn boats, bottled messages,
banished clouds. After the last one
falls, I touch every crater in your mouth,
infected with shadow, desire broke
heaving, blue jury. Your mouth bloodshot,
mine a cannon firing at every
holy thing—save for you &
our lips, thinned into horizon,
each other. Your face translucent
and glowing, my hunger growing bone,
& restless. Where is the empty body,
classified? May the witness take
the stand? The moon renounces dawn,
gaping tooth, blind eye, missing pinball.
Look, here. Your mouth without shadow,
mine whittled into smoke, light.
